A few cards and a little rain

Hello everyone, I've been making some samples for this weekend's demonstrations so thought I'd share some with you. They are whimsical cards using a mixture of my Christmas character stamps, brand new Christmas cardstock and lovely papers from Best Creations. Unfortunately the photos seem to have come out rather wishy washy, probably due to the dullsville day it's been here - more of that later! Anyway, the first card is my Santa Teddy and the card is backed with the Blue Snowball paper (I say paper, but it's cardstock really) from my new collection. Although you can't tell from the picture, the snowballs have a glitter effect over them. I punched the trees with a DIY Christmas Tree punch M232297 which also punches out little baubles to decorate them with. I left them off here though and just tucked the trees into torn white card strips across the card. I used the corner punch from the MS Aspen set to create three snowflakes, each topped with a pearl adhesive gem - again from Martha Stewart. The greeting is from the same stamp set as the teddy, PICSA6133. The next card features Finlay the frog! The background is the green version of my Snowballs cardstock which I've decorated with the baubles punched from the DIY tree, using my Lilac Christmas plaid card. I've used this as the strip across the card too. Finlay himself is stamped from the PICSA6129 with the sentiment being from PICSA6128. I coloured Finlay with Promarker pens and suspended him with silver thread that I overlaid onto an acetate strip so that he would hang over in front of the card rather than just dangling. Finlay is a quirky character, suitable for men's cards or quirky friends! Great for some terrible puns too! Next is Vanilla the teddy again, this time bringing home a tree. He is from the same set as Santa teddy. The background is from one of my Christmas topper sheets backed onto Blue Christmas Plain cardstock. The message is from PICSA6124 (Christmas Words Let It Snow set) and I stamped it using the Hydrangea Big n Juicy ink pad. I added some Diamond Stickles around the scene to complete it. Lastly is Vanilla Sledging from a different stamp set, PICSA6131, and I've set him against a background of the Trees paper from Best Creations - love this paper! The snowflakes are punched using MS Simple Snowflake M42-20005. I made each a double layer and then added some Stickles to the centres. Hope you like them - they are simple cards as I wanted to let the images and papers do the work! And, of course, Seasonal cards often need to be made more quickly than at other times!

Talking of Seasonal, and the fact that I am showing Christmas cards in August (!), the weather here has been phenomenal today. It has rained harder harder than we can remember. I looked out of the window and saw a canoe, a shoal of mackerel, two sealions and a pelican going past...well....that's a slight exaggeration...it was only one sealion! However, when David and I thought about the terrible floods in Pakistan it certainly put the weather here into persepective.

Well, in case I don't post tomorrow, I hope everyone has a great weekend, and hope to see you in St Helens or Kearsley. Lindsay